Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East

Mesopotamia is often called the birthplace of the law code, and the twenty-six essays gathered here test that reputation from many angles. Drawn from papers given at the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Ghent in 2013, and edited by Katrien de Graef and Anne Goddeeris, the collection moves through the Ur III, Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian and Neo-Assyrian periods, with excursions to Nuzi and the Hebrew Bible.

The Code of Hammurabi is here, alongside close studies of legal phraseology, the archaeological traces of how communities organised their common life, and biblical law. Some of the most intriguing pieces turn to divinatory texts and literature, asking how ancient writers imagined order and its undoing. A serious scholarly volume for Assyriologists, legal historians and anyone curious about how the earliest societies tried to keep chaos at bay.